Right after he left, I walked home too. It was hot outside, and my insides were a crockpot, stewing vague guilt about the crab trap thing. I walked home to sleep it off. Just like Florida summers, the sun here’s always trying to grind you to sleep. It’s easier sometimes, to just let it.
When I woke up it was almost dark and I went to eat at a fish place. I was reading The Bell Jar and drinking beer and waiting for my giant sandwich. The owner brought it to me, big as a baby’s head, and set it down on my table. She gave me a glass of fresh ice for my beer and walked back to the kitchen. As I bit around my fish, a big, black and red chicken jumped onto my table and held my eyes. I looked around it, wondering if the owner would shoo it out; not that I didn’t enjoy the company.
But over the chicken’s shoulder, the owner was distracted, haggling with a brown man at the counter. She didn’t see the chicken because they were squabbling over a watermelon. He’d come in off the street and asked if she’d like to buy it and they had advanced to the negotiation process. I couldn’t understand most of what they said but I felt their tension build and heard their voices rise until they were officially arguing. The chicken didn’t turn away or notice, it still looked at me. I wouldn’t feel bad if Milton’s trap was full of stupid, smelly chickens.
Soon after, the policia strolled in the same door the watermelon man and the chicken had wandered in, and they stopped the argument by drawing the weapons they rarely get to use; one pulled a billy club, the other carried a long, flat-head screwdriver. The watermelon guy had a machete, because he lived in or near the jungle, but the situation smoothly dissipated and the watermelon guy and the policia left and it was just me and the owner again when she finally looked at me over the chicken and said, "He just wanted too much for that melon."
The chicken left later, on his own terms, and when he was gone, my mind was free to focus on other things, like why did I feel guilty for setting those fish free from the crabtrap? I wanted to talk to Milton about it. Not apologize. Just talk. I remembered his words, "I’ll be here every night!" And so I decided that tonight, I would go to that bar by the water where we’d met.
He wasn’t there at 7:30 p.m. For this town, 7:30 is plenty late for drinking. The bar should have been full, but it was only Tweety the bartendress (the nickname stuck after that night we could see her bra through her shirt), three skinny cats roaming the big empty dance floor, and four dark Ticos on the other side of the bar. The Ticos looked worn and I assumed they’d worked all day in the sun. But then I recognized one whom I’d seen passed out on the street with his shirt on backward as I walked through ‘downtown’ on my way to the pier this morning. In the silent, American world behind my eyes, he is the village mascot, Shark Man.
Shark Man is in his thirties, but he has already drunk himself into a hunched over posture, which isn’t very sharklike, but his eyes, which are red rubber balls in his brown head, are not only protected by their heavy, horizontal lids, but also by a secondary, vertical set of lids that open and close underneath the normal ones. And since the oppression of alcohol causes him to squint, both sets of lids are always visible. Sharks have these same extra lids, to protect their eyes from the pieces of bone that fly when they rip something apart, but Shark Man seems harmless. Incapacitated. He and his friends across the bar were too busy to notice me staring at them; Shark Man was talking and they all were busy listening. I thought he must be telling them the plan.
I stopped watching them when one of the wandering bar cats jumped in my lap and loved me like a San Jose prostitute. I stroked and stroked and stroked and when it was groggy and sleepy with love, it’s eyes half-closed like it would pass out from ecstacy, I noticed that the cat had secondary eyelids as well. The cat was dying in my arms, and we didn’t need to speak to each other to get so close. I would have hated Milton Chapman’s guts, even thrown him to the policia, if he had shown me a giant torture cage of cats. Am I forgiving with him because I have his book in my bag?
Then he finally showed up. His entrance into the bar through the caged-in patio was a white announcement. He sat down next to me and smiled but he didn’t talk. She gave him a beer.
His sunburn wasn’t much worse than that afternoon, but it still hurt to look, especially when he smiled at me. The smile was painful though it did mean he’d forgiven me. But he still didn’t talk. I attributed his lack of words to the weed shortage I’d heard so much about around the village. I took him to task and asked, "So, you don’t really talk too much when there’s not weed in the village, huh?"
He turned to me and I noticed that his eyes were indeed glazed and he said, "That’s what everyone will tell you when you first get here: ‘There’s a serious shortage here right now.’ And you believe them and let them smoke your weed under the pretense that they have none. But there’s always, ALWAYS weed here. Why do you think I live here?"
"I thought you lived here to kill the sea life and write." I answered. I should have been more careful, more gentle with him given the events of earlier. But he was tough. He could take it.
"No, not to write." He said, stern. "I only write in my journal."
It was the first thing he’d said about writing. I wanted more, of course, and asked, "Why don’t you write to get published anymore?" He looked at me blank and I added, "Assuming you’ve ever been published before…I haven’t…not really."
"Well, I just don’t want to exhibit." He answered. His perfectly paced Southern voice attracted the cat in my lap and she transferred over to him.
"My spiritual credo has always been to dedicate the majority of my energy to senseless things." He said, paying the cat no attention. "And writing, artistic writing at least, is pretty senseless; it’s stupid to want to make up stories, it’s like playtime. So I always though it was a great thing to commit to instead of jobs or whatever. But then I started trying to live off of writing, and that was lame."
I hadn’t known he was popular enough to live off his books. I’d heard he was forced to teach a class at The University of Florida to pay the bills. I signed up to take the class. I was ready to move up there from Tampa for a semester but then they fired him for drinking too much, coming to class mean and quiet. He didn’t seem like much of a drinker now. He sipped beer slowly. Maybe he’d learned his lesson.
He continued, "Sometimes I’ll write stories for my parents and sister if I don’t have any money at Christmas. And I write letters and stories to my girlfriend in New York, but other than that I don’t write except a little bit in my journal. Journals are the most senseless thing, since you don’t even show it to anybody. So I feel better just doing that."
Then I was quiet, and he seemed to know what I was thinking so he said, "I don’t think it’s bad to want to get published though. I know you said that you’re a writer and I wouldn’t look down on you cause you want to try and make a living from it. I think it’s great that you published that book yerself. That’s pretty senseless."
I was conflicted in the shadow of that remark, but overall I felt good. He likes me. I asked, "So how could I get stuff published then, so I can make a living?"
He didn’t yell, but he said, in all capital letters, "CAN WE PLEASE STOP TALKING ABOUT WRITING?"
"You are an asshole, man." I said, quoting him. I drank at my beer, then added, "But I’m not gonna walk off into the jungle when you offend me. I’ll still sit here and talk."
"We shouldn’t talk about this afternoon either." He ordered. I obeyed. But I itched. I wanted to argue with him.
I asked him, "So, your girlfriend lives in New York?"
"Well, yeah. So did I." He said. "But I don’t like it."
"Dude, you abandoned Florida?"
"Well, I lost a job I had teaching in Florida," He admitted, "And then the Superbowl came through and when it was gone, the state had stretchmarks and I just didn’t want her anymore…Florida, I mean…not my girlfriend…Florida just ain’t got a soul anymore. That was when me and my girlfriend moved to New York…but it was so expensive, and we weren’t getting along. So, I saved up a bunch of money from writing and just came here to live. My mama left me her piece of land here when she died so I don’t pay no rent. "
"When are you going back to your girlfriend?" I asked.
"Well, she don’t know it, but this is where I’m gonna die." He answered, then looked down at the cat in his lap. She was still horny for affection. And though he wasn’t giving it to her, she mewed and purred and hummed at him like when I’d given her everything.
Across the bar, Shark Man and his friend were filing out the door into the night. Milton didn’t notice, he was staring down at the pining cat. As the last of them left the bar, Milton looked up at me and said, "When I was little, like, six-years old, before me and momma moved from Indiana to Florida, she had a cat that I loved a lot. It was really a family member. I used to grab the end of its tail in my hand and pretend it was a like, a simultaneous microphone and atenae to talk to god. She meant a lot to me…." Then his voice became soft and I knew the story would be depressing, but his accent smoothed the ride of his anecdotes, made them comfortably predictable but interesting enough to follow to the ends. I waited. He continued, "The cat’s name was Missy and one day Missy got sick and her paws turned to hamburger meat and she got mean as hell." He finally petted the stray cat. He pinched her ears and she mewed. "We didn’t know what was wrong with her and she was just hissin and spittin and she scratched me a bunch of times and momma just hated her once she got sick. They were best friends and then Missy got sick and…
"So this one day momma told me we was taking Missy to the doctor, and we put her in this cage and when momma shut the door I heard her say to the cat, real nasty, ‘We’re gonna fix your ass!’ After that we went to pick up my aunt, a big fat women, 300 pounds…maybe like Alana’s mom." We laughed together, but when I thought of Ilka I had to fight to maintain my smile. He continued, "We picked up my fat aunt and in the car she was staring at me and I was smiling and so she asked my momma, ‘Jon doesn’t seem sad at all. Does he know?’"
It hurt me a bit that he still wanted me to think he name was Jon. I wondered if he were lying about Missy’s name too. He said, "And so my fat aunt leans forward from the back seat and asks me in my ear, ‘Jon, do you know where we’re taking Missy?’ and so I says, ‘To the doctor.’ And my aunt says, ‘Do you know why we’re taking Missy to the doctor?’ And I turned around to her from the front seat and said, ‘Yeah! We’re taking her to get her ass fixed!’"
Milton laughed at his story, then pushed the stray cat off his lap and asked me, "Hey, you got any more of that grass? There’s a shortage in town?" He winked.
"O.K." I conceded, happily. "We can walk out to the pier and empty your crab trap."
"HEY!" He hissed, looking around as if I’d spilled the beans. "Shut the fuck up about that."
"I’m sorry." I blurted, still not knowing why I was sorry.
"I hate apologies, man." He replied.
"So does Alana." I told him. I felt in my pockets and the pipe was in there so I rose, ready to go smoke.
"Alana’s a sexy girl." He re-iterated. He rose too.
We walked off the patio, out back, down the steps. It was indeed high-tide. I’d been here five days and hadn’t seen a high tide. We walked along the sea-wall side by side, crunching the earth as I lit up. I toked and Milton said, "Y’know, how I met Alana? I met her the day before she was leaving to the US." I passed him the pipe, he hit it and continued his story with a lung-full, "I was walking down the main street there in town, and there was these Tico kids, young dudes, 14-years-old, no hair on their nuts yet but still acting big and brave, you know? They’re walking on the right side of me, and Alana was walking on the other side." He exhaled and handed me the pipe. "So I’m in between Alana and these good looking Tico kids. I didn’t know them or her, but the Tico kids were looking at me."
I took a hit and passed the pipe back and his voice was moving faster. He held the pipe without smoking as he said, "So one of the Tico kid’s, he’s got a baseball hat on and some sunglasses and he’s looking past me over at Alana and I guess he thought she’d think he was cool if he made fun of me, so he starts imitating my walk next to me and he asks, ‘Hey man. Are you cool?’ He said it good, in English, and it was obvious he was like, raggin’ on me. Alana’s over on my left still and I asked him, ‘Huh?’ and he says again, ‘Are you cool, man? Cause I think you’re cool.’
"I couldn’t think of nothing to say and I felt pretty silly with this little kid making fun of me when there’s this sexy girl walking next to me. And I couldn’t just beat his ass…you don’t know who’s brother or son the kid is, and this town is so small…And just as I’m wondering what to do, Alana crosses over in front of me and puts her arm around the kid, leads him away and they’re talking real soft in Spanish, his friends are all watching, and so she grabs his hat by the brim and pulls it backwards off his head and just kisses the hell out of him. He had no idea what to do! His friends all started laughing and they ran off and left him there! Then he ran off too!" He lit the pipe and took a big hit.
I pictured Alana doing all of that. It seemed like her. I was jealous. He passed the pipe back and I said to him as I smoked, "Yeah man, she’s cool as shit. I’m surprised you didn’t fall in love with her."
He didn’t answer. Then he said, "Let’s walk to the pier."
On the way to the pier we admired all the rare water, he appreciated the high-tide also, and I asked him about Shark Man. He knew exactly who I meant. "It’s funny that you call him that, cause he’s the guy who’s baby got eaten by that hammerhead I told you about." We reached the foot of the pier and he explained, "His wife is fucking 15-years-old!" He slapped me in the chest with the back of his hand for punctuation and handed me the pipe and continued, "She’s hot too! But anyway, he was out on this pier one day fishing with his 15-year-old wife and all their kids, and he was drinking. He’s always drunk. Always. That’s why his eyes do that. Motherfucker’s fallin’ apart. But they were all out here and the stupid motherfucker bumped the little 6 month baby off the pier into the water, all wrapped in blankets, ploompf, off into the water.
"Motherfucker didn’t even have time to jump in and drown himself trying to save the baby before this big ol’ hammerhead came up and GULP."
He nodded and I handed him back the pipe when we were at the end of the pier. He added, "But he’s lucky it happened that way: the baby woulda drown anyway. This way, at least it isn’t his fault."
He leaned against the piling where his trap was tied, but he wasn’t about to pull it up. As we finished the bowl there was a loud motor boat coming in. I hid the pipe in the pocket of my swimsuit. We watched the boat sputter and swerve, growing nearer until Milton said, "Oh this motherfucker is always drunk." He slapped my chest again and said, "Check it out, it’s your boy…"
There were five brown men on the boat, their black hair blown back. One of them was Shark Man, closing his four lids against the dry breeze. They pulled next to the pier then all bent down in the boat, out of our view. I heard them counting in Spanish. When they reached ‘cuatro,’ the gave a synchronous, breathless heave, and lobbed a ten-foot hammerhead up and onto the pier. It was amazing. Along the shark’s skin white mushroom of flesh blossomed and the orange head of a long screwdriver stuck from between the eyes of its broad head. I’d never seen anything that big and helpless.
When the Ticos saw us, they all froze, said some things to us in Spanish, then they went to work carving the shark. I counted 15 white mushrooms and asked Milton, "What are those scars?"
"Gunshots." He answered.
The Ticos heard us talking again and looked up again with more indiscernible Spanish. Then Shark Man, hunched over, waved his hands, silencing the other Ticos. They all stopped working on the shark and were silent. Shark Man turned to us and tried to make eye contact through the little square of his eyes and said slowly, in English, "Don’t…tell."
Then they went back to their busy, noisy work, like fire ants stripping a chicken wing. They reached the guts and cut them open with purpose. The shark’s stomach bulged and they all seemed happy as they opened it. But they’re smiles died when all they found was a whole pelican, slimy and round, grabbing its knees like a fetus. I think they’d hoped to find the baby. In five minutes, they’d reduced the shark to a head, gills, some fins, then a long, white back bone leading to a majestic, gray tail.
The shark still jerked as the Ticos rolled it of the dock with their feet. Its last remaining nerves told it to swim and it shimmied to a place in the water that was two feet deep, then stopped and sank to the bottom. Shark Man wrapped the meat in newspaper, and they all jumped in the boat and farted off back into the night.
For a while we stared at the long carcass in the water. Milton said, "That thing’s either gonna draw a lot Junonias here, and Ill have a good week, or else they’re all gonna come and eat that carcass and not be hungry for my bait."
I didn’t feel good. The sea was silent and I wondered where the sound of their boat motor went.
"But at least he got the satisfaction of revenge." Milton continued. "They were wantin to cut him open and found that baby though, so they could bury it Catholic style. He shit it out though already, I guess." Then he added, "Now that’s something you could write about."
I told Milton I had to go and I left him there on the pier to figure out whether the dead shark was a good thing or a bad one.
When I was far away, on the beach, I saw him cup his hands to the sides of his mouth and yell, "If you want to see something really fucked up, meet me out here early in the morning!…Like, 6 o’clock!"